Q&A With #1 Bestselling Thriller Author Kevin Wignall!

With the film The Hunter's Prayer, directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Sam Worthington and Odeya Rush, to be released worldwide in 2016, Kevin Wignall has been an author for the last fifteen years. His latest Thriller novel, A Death In Sweden, is already #1 in Amazon.

Can you summarize your latest book A Death In Sweden?

It’s about Dan Hendricks, someone who used to do dirty work for the CIA and knows they’d now like to silence him permanently.  He’s offered a job that might get them off his back but it’s not as simple as it seems – he has to find out why a man called Jacques Fillon, who recently died in a bus crash, went to hide out in northern Sweden.  Only problem is, the victim of the crash must have been someone else, because Jacques Fillon never existed.

Where did you find inspiration for the characters of Dan Hendricks and Jacques Fillon?

I can't really talk about Jacques because that would give away the plot. The inspiration for Dan was in a lot of the people who freelanced for intelligence agencies after 9/11, particularly those involved in extraordinary rendition (making people disappear to countries where they could be tortured).

Who is your favorite character from your book and why?

I don't really have a favorite, but it's always interesting to write about an enigma like Jacques Fillon whose identity is revealed little by little.

How about your least favorite characters?  What makes them less appealing to you?

Again, this is difficult, because you put the same effort into writing the bad guys as you do the heroes.  There are a few characters I wouldn't want to meet in person, but I still like them on the page.

When you’re writing, do you use any celebrities or people you know as visual inspiration for the characters? If so, have you got any examples?!

Very rarely.  Occasionally I'll use people I know as a rough guide.  Some years ago I wrote a short story about a psychopathic criminal caught up in a terrorist attack, "Hal Checks Out", and I kind of imagined him being Christopher Walken, but for the most part, the characters come right out of my own head.

Give us an interesting fun fact about the creation of your book.

The opening scene was inspired and based on a bus journey I made myself.  In fact, I saw a girl on that bus whose appearance I used as a model for the Siri who appears in the book (it's like I'm contradicting my previous answer!).  I dedicated the book to that girl in the acknowledgements, though I didn't speak to her and know nothing about her - so someone in northern Sweden has a book dedicated to her but has no idea.

If you could change ONE thing about your novel, what would it be? Why?

Not a thing. Don't get me wrong, if I started reading it I'd probably want to take a pen and start making edits, but I'm happy that I wrote the book I wanted to write.

What was your journey to getting published?

Well, I was first published a long time ago ("People Die" back in 2001).  I'd been talking about being a writer for a long time and finally realised I needed to just sit down and write a book.  So I did, sent it to an agent and got a publisher, remarkably simply - the years since have had their fair share of ups and downs, so it's nice to be in an "up" at the moment.

What is the biggest myth about being a novelist?

That it's miserable, that life is tough and you earn no money.  Okay, some of those things can always be true, but they can be true in most professions.  The bottom line is you're doing what you love, and you're doing it for readers, who are generally nice and well-informed people.  What's not to enjoy about that?

Who influenced you as a writer?

I think you're influenced even by the writers you don't enjoy, because they teach you what you don't want to do.  I suspect Graham Greene was quite a big positive influence on my writing.

What's next for Kevin Wignall?

"The Traitor's Story" comes out next June.  It's the story of a 15 year old American girl who goes missing in Switzerland and the disgraced British spy who agrees to help find her, little realising her disappearance might be linked to his own past.

How about a snippet from your book?

Sure, this is a short scene from near the beginning, which gives an idea of who Dan Hendricks is, how he's at the top of his game. He's just lifted a guy off the street in Madrid, a former defence chief who's been in hiding, and he's handing him over to the Venezuelan government.  Despite the air of calm control, Dan's own life is about to take a nosedive too -

The airfield was quite a way out of town and Martinez seemed happy to sit in silence, staring out of the window at a city that had been home but that he would probably never see again.  Dan thought of the way he’d looked walking with his son and imagined he was thinking of that, too, of the years that he would lose with his family.  It was too bad.

When they arrived, Dan left Charlie with the car and walked Martinez into the small office.  The three Venezuelan intelligence officers had been sitting drinking coffee, but all stood when they came in and seemed to treat Martinez with a degree of respect.  Dan guessed the man had been right to see this as the most favorable option, no matter what happened from here on in.

Martinez turned then and offered his hand to Dan, saying, ‘Thank you, Mr…?’

Dan shook his hand, but said, ‘Dan. You don’t need to know my other name.’

‘I thank you anyway, for making sure my son got home, and for not making it… difficult.’  He looked curious then, and said, ‘How did you find me?’

‘You left a trail, everyone does, very faint in your case, but still there. I just followed it.’

Martinez nodded understanding, and said, ‘So that makes me wonder if your other name is Hendricks.’

‘Like I said, you don’t need to know who I am. I didn’t do this. Have a safe journey.’

Join Kevin at kevinwignall.com or buy his book in Amazon.

Kevin Wignall is a British writer, born in Brussels in 1967. He spent many years as an army child in different parts of Europe, and went on to study politics and international relations at Lancaster University. He became a full-time writer after the publication of his first book, People Die (2001). His other novels are Among the Dead (2002); Who Is Conrad Hirst? (2007), shortlisted for the Edgar Award and the Barry Award; and Dark Flag (2010). The Hunter's Prayer was originally titled For the Dogs in the USA. The film The Hunter's Prayer, directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Sam Worthington and Odeya Rush, will be released worldwide in 2016.